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Microsoft Ties Majorana 2 Quantum Chip to Its Build AI Push
Microsoft used Build to show off Majorana 2, its latest quantum computing chip and the next step in a long-running effort to build a commercially useful quantum computer by 2029.
The announcement is highly technical, but the broader message is simpler: Microsoft says it is getting closer to making quantum hardware stable enough to scale. The new chip is part of the company's bet on topological qubits, an approach Microsoft says could make quantum systems more reliable and easier to build than competing designs.
"We're 1,000 times better," said Chetan Nayak, Microsoft technical fellow.
Microsoft said the new chip's qubits have a mean lifetime of 20 seconds, with some lasting as long as one minute. The company said operations can run on the microsecond scale, and that the chip's small qubit size helps support a path toward larger systems. By comparison, Microsoft said Majorana 1 qubit lifetimes were between one and 12 milliseconds.
The announcement builds on Microsoft's February 2025 introduction of Majorana 1, its first quantum computing chip. At the time, Microsoft said the processor used a Topological Core architecture and was designed to support future systems with as many as 1 million qubits, a threshold often cited as necessary for useful quantum workloads.
The Majorana 2 announcement also ties Microsoft's quantum work more directly to its broader Build messaging around agentic AI. Microsoft said the chip was developed with help from Microsoft Discovery, the company's agentic AI platform for research and development that became generally available this week.
"Agentic AI has permeated almost everything we do -- it's just become kind of a very natural part of our workflow," Nayak said.
The company said its quantum team used Microsoft Discovery to manage workflows, automate measurements, optimize fabrication, identify flaws and propose new approaches. Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president for quantum at Microsoft, said AI helped automate one of the most difficult parts of the quantum process.
"Using agentic AI to automate the measurements was a game changer," Alam said.
For enterprise IT teams, the near-term impact is still limited. Microsoft is not pitching Majorana 2 as a production-ready system for business workloads. Instead, the announcement is another marker in Microsoft's effort to position Azure, AI and quantum computing as connected parts of a longer-term computing platform for materials science, chemistry, energy, health care and other hard scientific problems.
Still, Microsoft's quantum claims continue to face scrutiny. Science reported last year that debate over Microsoft-linked Majorana research continues to "divide the field." The skepticism follows years of disputes around evidence for Majorana particles, including corrections and retractions tied to earlier research in the field.
That history matters because Microsoft's quantum roadmap depends on the same broad idea: that Majorana-based topological qubits can provide a more stable foundation for large-scale quantum computing. Microsoft says Majorana 2 shows measurable progress on that path, but outside researchers have repeatedly called for more reproducible data before accepting the company's strongest claims.
Microsoft is now targeting a scalable quantum computer by 2029, cutting its prior timeline in half. If the company can meet that goal, Majorana 2 may be remembered as a key step toward useful quantum computing. For now, it is also a reminder that Microsoft's most ambitious hardware bet still has to clear both engineering and scientific hurdles.